The Billionaire Regretted Losing His Invisible Wife novel Chapter 421

Chapter 421 Borrowed Time

Kyle’s POV

Dr. Norbu was still in the chair. His burgundy robes pooled around him like liquid. The fabric looked ancient. Hand–woven. The kind of thing looked like it had been passed down through generations of monks in some monastery high in the Himalayas where the air was so thin.

He didn’t look out of place here though. In this sterile American hospital room with its beeping machines and antiseptic smell and fluorescent lights that hummed like trapped insects.

If anything, the room looked wrong around him.

“You went swimming tonight,” he said.

Not a question. A statement.

“I fell in a pool.”

“That was either very brave or very foolish.”

“Probably both.”

“Probably.” He smiled. “But you are still here.”

“Is it?”

He reached into his bag. Not the leather medical bag Western doctors carried. This was cloth. Woven. With patterns that hurt to look at too long because they seemed to shift when you weren’t paying attention.

He pulled out a small vial. Dark glass. Filled with liquid that looked like amber. Or honey. Or both.

“Your blood work from this morning came back.” He set the vial on the nightstand. “Your inflammatory markers are down.”

I blinked. “Down?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Twenty percent from last week.”

That didn’t make sense. Inflammatory markers didn’t just drop. Not in someone whose immune system was actively trying to murder them from the inside.

“That’s not possible,” I said.

“And yet. According to the imaging we did while you were sleeping yesterday, the hemorrhaging in your esophageal tissue has ceased. The vessels have begun to heal. There is new tissue formation. Scar tissue, yes, but healthy scar tissue. The kind that holds things together rather than tearing them apart.”

I stared at him.

Chapter 42 Borrowed Time

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He stared back. Calm. Like he had all the time in the world.

“That’s not how autoimmune diseases work,” I said finally.

“Your body is remembering how to heal itself.” He picked up one of the supplement bottles he’d brought. Turned it in his hands. “Your life force. Your energy. Now it flows again.”

Something was working.

“Why?” I asked.

“When I was young,” he said quietly, “I fell in love with a woman named Dolma.”

I blinked at the sudden shift. “What?”

“She was a nun. Or training to be one. She had taken preliminary vows but not the final ones.” He smiled. Still looking out the window. “I was a monk. Or training to be one. Same situation.”

“I didn’t know monks told stories about their love lives.”

“Most don’t. But I am old now. And you are dying. And I think you need to hear this.” He turned to face me. “We met during a pilgrimage. Three months of walking through the mountains. Sleeping in monasteries and caves. Eating whatever the villagers would give us.”

“Sounds romantic,” I said dryly.

“It was awful. I got dysentery. She sprained her ankle so badly she couldn’t walk for a week. We both nearly froze to death in a snowstorm.” He smiled. “And it was the happiest three months of my life.”

Despite everything, I found myself interested. “What happened?”

“We reached the holy site. Completed the pilgrimage. And we had a choice to make.” He moved back to the chair. Sat. “Continue our training. Take our final vows. Become fully ordained. Or leave. Choose each other. Choose a different path.”

“And?”

“I chose the monastery. She chose her order.” He said it simply. No drama. No anguish. Just fact. “We said goodbye at the base of the mountain. She went east. I went west. I never saw her again.”

“That’s “I stopped. Didn’t know how to finish.

“Sad?” he offered. “Yes. It was very sad. For many years, I meditated on that sadness. Examined it. I had been a coward.” He said it matter–of–factly. Like he was commenting on the weather. “I chose the monastery because I was afraid. Afraid of building a life with her.”

“Did you regret it?”

“Every day for the first twenty years. Then gradually less.”

He pulled something from inside his robes. A small photograph. He held it out to me.

I took it.

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Chapter 421 Borrowed Time

+15 Bonus

The photograph showed a young woman. Maybe twenty. Beautiful in that way that had nothing to do with symmetry or fashion. Just alive. Radiant. She was smiling at the camera. Or maybe at whoever was taking the picture. Her eyes bright with something that looked like mischief.

“That’s her,” Dr. Norbu said. “Dolma. That was taken the day before we said goodbye.”

“For seventy years you’ve carried a photograph of a woman you spent three months with.”

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